WOYF Premiere Photos

Last Sunday, October 13, we held the first public screening of our newest short Written on Your Face for cast, crew and friends at the Varsity Theater on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Around 80 people attended the screening and stuck around afterwards for a question-and-answer session and a viewing of the Written on Your Face blooper reel. It was a wonderful kickoff for the film, and we're hoping that we'll go on from here to find an audience at festivals throughout 2014.

If you follow Miner Light Productions on Facebook, then chances are you've already gotten to see the photos from the premiere event. But in case you aren't a Facebook person, just follow this link and you should be able to see all of them: http://ow.ly/pWXJS

Written On Your Face is done!

After a long period of post-production, our next short film, Written on Your Face, is now finished and ready to be seen by all! Having reached that major milestone, we are now looking ahead to our next steps. Plans are in the works for a local screening of the film in the Carrboro/Chapel Hill/Durham area, and we are also working on a big website redesign.

In other words, though things have been quiet around here recently, we hope to have much more to share soon! Further bulletins as events warrant!

Where We've Been, Where We're At

Whew! We knew it had been a long time since we'd posted an update, but didn't know it had been SO long. Here's a look at where we are with our current projects (and some new ones):

El Caffinato: With the one year anniversary of the festival premiere of El Caffinato fast approaching, our first short's festival run has come to a close. In the next few weeks, we'll be providing download links for a high definition version of the film to our Kickstarter backers. With nine festival acceptances in all, we're very proud of how our first short has done in the past year. At some point in 2013, we'll likely put a version of the film up online for general viewing.

Written On Your Face: During a wildly busy couple weeks in late June and early July, we completed the production stage of our second short, Written On Your Face. Thanks to a fabulous cast and crew, we walked away from the shoot with a lot of fabulous footage and have been working hard on post production since then. This first stage of post has been very hermetic, mostly involving the two of us huddling around a laptop screen cutting and recutting. Two weeks ago, we hit a milestone in that process when we completed a first rough cut of the film from start to finish. We've been watching and starting to tweak that rough cut since then, and soon we will send off a first working cut to our musicians to being the next stage of post production. Expect more updates soon. We're also at work on redoing the website for that short. We've temporarily taken down the link to the first version of that film's website, and hope to announce the relaunch soon. In case you haven't gotten to see them yet, you can get a little preview of the film (of sorts) by checking out the behind-the-scenes photos on the website of our wonderful still photographer, Nick Graetz.

Carrboro Film Festival: Meanwhile, we've also been helping out with this year's Carrboro Film Festival (the same festival at which El Caffinato premiered last year) by serving on the selection committee. We got to see some great films as part of that committee, and we're really happy with the slate of films that will be shown in November. If you are local to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area, be sure to mark you calendars for November 18th - the festival starts at 1 pm!

This year's festival will also feature a new project that we're producing! That's right, as part of the Festival Committe, we've also been involved in the scripting and production of the Carrboro Film Festival Opener, a three minute short that will kick off the festival. We'll hold off on revealing the details, since you'll get to see some footage from it (and the short itself) before too long. We will say that we're very fortunate to be working with the very talented Mike Wiley and also pleased to be working with Nic Beery once again.

In a little bit of news not strictly related to Miner Light Productions, we are still very happy to report that Johnny Awful will be one of the many great shorts being shown at the Carrboro Film Festival this year. We helped as casting director, art director and assistant director on this project (don't worry - we weren't allowed to vote on whether it got in or not), and it is the directorial debut of Nathan Rosenquist, the cinematographer we worked with on Written On Your Face. We're really happy for Nathan and excited to see this fun short on the big screen in November.

Festival Screenings, Kickstarter Success, Production Starting

We know, we know. We've been quiet over here. But man, has there beens lots going on!

First of all, thanks to the amazing support of over 107 backers, our Kickstarter campaign for our new short, Written On Your Face, was a rousing success! We are so grateful for the support - everyone's contributions are being put to great use as we prepare for production. For example, we get to rent two of these babies for a day of shooting:

The Joker Bug 800 - daylight-balanced, super bright, more powerful than a locomotive... you get the idea. 

Secondly, El Caffinato had its NYC premiere as part of the New Filmmakers Film Festival at the Film Anthology Archives. We screened right before the feature presentation this evening - also a musical, called "It Is What It Is," directed by VP Boyle. It turns out that the Big Apple can't get enough of us, though, because El Caffinato will also screen as part of the Manhattan Film Festival on June 30.

Of course, we can't be at either of them - and there was some reason for that... oh yeah: production! Filming for Written On Your Face begins on Saturday, and we'll be wrapped by early July. Keep an eye on the Written On Your Face website for regular updates on that project.

Kickstarter Campaign Launched!

The fundraising campaign for our new short, "Written On Your Face," has now launched. Between now and June 9, we are trying to raise $5,000 to pay for things like costumes, locations, equipment, food, and music for our 25 minute romantic comedy about college seniors struggling to read each other as easily as they can read their books for class.

The campaign launched just a few days ago and we're already over 30% of the way there! If we don't reach $5,000 by June 9, we don't get any of the funds at all, so please consider heading over to check it and consider making a contribution yourself. Only $10 gets you a digital download copy of the film!

If you're a fan of El Caffinato, this campaign is also your first chance to get your own copy of that short, either in digital form, or on a signed DVD with "Written On Your Face" (just $30)!

New website launched, Kickstarter pending

Hopefully by now you have noticed that a new portion of the Miner Light Productions website has been launched - we have started up a separate page for our upcoming short Written On Your Face, which is slated for production in June.

All news relating to that project will be posted directly to the new site, so you may want to head over there and subscribe to email updates if you use that as a way of keeping up with us.

Things pertaining to El Caffinato and its festival screenings, or general news relating to Miner Light Productions, will continue to be posted here. It's a lot to keep track of, but we think this keeps things a little neater.

Another reason to check out the new website is that we will be launching a Kickstarter campaign for Written On Your Face in the next few days. Included among the rewards for contributing to that project are a number of things related to El Caffinato, including a digital download copy of the movie and a signed DVD that will include both films. We hope that, if you were a fan of our first short, you will consider making a contribution to the making of our second and will stay up-to-date on our various projects.

Changes a-rumbling

As you can see, we're in the midst of a bit of a website redesign, and space is being mapped out for something new. Hints of a Kickstarter campaign are in the air, and we have a desk drawer rattling like something wants out...

Stay tuned!

El Caffinato Accepted to Indie Spirit Festival

We are very pleased to announce the "El Caffinato" has been accepted to its 5th festival, the Indie Spirit Film Festival in Colorado Springs, CO.

The festival screenings are on a bit of a roll, with two in February and another upcoming showing in March at the Green Bay Film Festival. Needless to say, we're thrilled and honored that our rock opera seems to be finding an audience.

Other news you might have missed:

Name change: If you aren't on Facebook, you might have missed the subtle change in name. We are no longer "Miner Productions," but instead "Miner Light Productions." Our new web address is www.minerlightproductions.com (adjust bookmarks accordingly). We'll, uh, fix the banner up top soon. And if you are on Facebook and still didn't know about it, it might be because you haven't "liked" our page, which you should go do right now! There's neat photos there, and it's the best way to stay up-to-the-minute on the goings-on here.

Upcoming production: We're itching to tell you more about what we've got on the burner, but it's still just a little too soon to start talking details. The script is in the final stages of development, and then we begin pre-production. At that moment, we will be launching a fundraising campaign and will be telling you lots and lots of details.

Soon, we promise.

In the meantime, we helped out on the crew of another local NC production that might be of interest: "Johnny Awful," written and directed by Nathan Rosenquist.

"El Caffinato" screening in Green Bay, WI

In about an hour from now, "El Caffinato" will have its first public screening outside of NC when it plays at the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City. But we're happy to announce that it won't be the last out-of-state screening: we've just heard that we will also be screening at the 2nd Annual Green Bay Film Festival from March 23-25! Not only that - we're screening on Saturday in the early evening, a stellar time slot!

Obviously, the pace of news is picking up around here at Miner Light Productions. Two festival screenings in February and now one in March, plus close to 150 fans on Facebook, 3 short film script drafts rattling in the drawer, and one or two other things that we can't even tell you about yet... it's a good time to stay tuned and watch this space for more.

Thanks so much to the folks in Green Bay and to all of you for your continued interest and support!

Film Threat reviews "El Caffinato"

It's been a while since we've screened "El Caffinato" in any large public setting, and though we've got two festival screenings approaching, it was a real thrill to wake up this morning to find some feedback on the film in the form of a review on FilmThreat.com.

And they liked us! Awarding the film 4 out of 5 stars, they said: "it would be next to impossible to not give yourself over to a fun and creative short film that must have been a royal pain to plan, shoot and edit." Thanks, guys!

But don't take our word for it; go check out the full review: http://www.filmthreat.com/reviews/46301/#ixzz1lKzGGyyZ

Coming soon to GSO...

We've just received word that "El Caffinato" will be screening at the Carolina Film and Video Festival in Greensboro later in February! 

This one is really exciting for us for several reasons: Greensboro is Liz's home turf, it's nearby so we'll be able to attend the screening, and it means more opportunities for all you North Carolinians to catch the film close to home.

So come out and join us at the Elliot University Center at UNCG on Thursday, February 23 at 7:00 pm. There will be sure to be at least a small contingent of the cast and crew in attendance, so come and say hello if you see us!

Between the screening in Boulder City at the Dam Short Festival next week and now this, we're looking at two festival screenings in one month. Still waiting on other decisions, so stay tuned!

Oh yeah - and we've written three more scripts. So there's definitely more in the works. More on that soon, too.

"El Caffinato" is going west!

Today was a two-fer for El Caffinato.

First, we got to pick up a copy of the Carrboro Citizen and see El Caff featured in the arts and culture insert. Then this came in the (e)mail:

That's right, folks. Our hipster western musical is going west! From February 9-11, El Caffinato will screen along with 100 other shorts as part of the Dam Short Film Festival in Boulder City, Nevada - half an hour from Vegas and right by the Hoover Dam!

We're thrilled and honored to be part of such a cool festival dedicated to the art of short filmmaking. We're especially stoked that our film is screening as part of a block called "Unique Views: Fresh and Inventive Approaches to Filmmaking Ranging From The Real To The Surreal."

So if anyone is planning a Vegas vacation, or if you know anyone out there in Nevada, pass on the word!

El Caff makes the local news!

Happy New Year everyone!

Things have been quiet on our end for a few weeks now. Aside from the behind-the-scenes photos that we posted on our Facebook page (go see them and "like" the page here), we haven't had a lot to report. All of that should be changing, starting now.

El Caffinato, "one of the most talked-about films at the Carrboro Film Festival," rings in the New Year with a little bit of local press.

In December, Carrboro Citizen reporter Margot Lester interviewed Liz and Rory about the project, and now El Caff is featured in The Mill - the Carrboro Citizen's monthly arts and culture insert.

If you are local to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area, you can pick up a copy of the Citizen for free at various newsstands about town. You can also read the article online at the Citizen's website (scroll down and look for the .pdf link to the January Mill insert.

More to come!

El Caff Wins Best Film at Carrboro Film Festival!

It was a really big weekend for El Caffinato - first, we screened the movie for members of the cast and crew at our apartment, converting our living room temporarily into a movie theater for the occasion. A number of the terrific "El Caffinato" team were able to come, joined by friends and family, some of whom had not gotten to see the film at all yet. It was great to see everyone, and great to hear a fresh set of laughs and reactions to the movie.

The next day was the Carrboro Film Festival, a full day of really terrific films made by filmmakers who all had some connection to North Carolina. We saw lots of moving documentaries, terrific pieces of animation and great narrative shorts. When "El Caffinato" came on in the 5:30-7:00, we had all just scared been half to death by Michael Sharpe's "Deviling" - we weren't sure how the audience would react to the transition to people singing and making hipster jokes. But we were thrilled to hear the collective murmur of recognition when the music started ("Wait, this is a musical?!") and relieved to hear the many laughs that various moments elicited.

Then at the end of the day, there was this:

The Kay Kyser Award for "Best Professional Film."

"El Caffinato" walked away from the festival with the "Best Professional Film" award. We were surprised and honored to be selected from among all the great films that showed at the festival. What a beginning!

We also have made an official movie poster now, which you can check out here, on our IMDb page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2100434/

Behind the Scenes at Milo's Lament

As we mentioned earlier, "El Caffinato" will have its festival premiere at the Carrboro Film Festival on November 20, 2011. The schedule is finalized, and it looks like we will be part of a block of stellar films starting at 5:30 and running until 7:00, with a Q & A session following the block and the festival awards ceremony right afterwards. Tickets to the whole festival are just $7.00, so you should come out for the day (starts at 1) and see a terrific, eclectic mix of short films.

In the meantime, in case the trailer wasn't enough of a taste for you, we thought we'd offer a little behind-the-scenes look at a section of our movie that we refer to as "Milo's Lament." This is how we took it from conceptualization to screen. 

It starts with a storyboard, drawn by Liz Levitt-Bradley:

Liz drew 140 little drawings like this one, plotting out camera angles, camera motion, edits, and (to some extent) lighting and costume. All of this was done before we got to the set on the day of shooting. We showed early drafts of these to our cinematographer as a way of talking through the shoot, "rehearsing" everything as much as we could before starting. 

Then it was time to go and shoot. As directors, this was the fun part, because we got to watch as our cinematographer, Nic Beery, and gaffer, Nathan Rosenquist, brought their creativity to bear on the ideas that we put on paper, bringing them to life in a way that surpassed everything we had imagined. In this case, we were at the Carrboro Arts Center (the day before we shot at Jessee's Coffee and Bar, which was our primary location): 

Nathan Rosenquist focuses a light on Zachary Davidson in preparation for filming.

This gave us the raw footage - a lot of little pieces, not in sequence - which we then assembled into the right order (using the storyboard as a guide) and color corrected to make it look nice and dramatic and smooth. Here's one frame from the sequence that resulted from filming on that day: 

Neat, huh? 

See you at the Carrboro Film Festival! 

El Caffinato to screen at Carrboro Film Festival!

The official word is in: El Caffinato will have its festival premiere at the fifth annual Carrboro Film Festival on November 20! The festival screens short films made by filmmakers from all across the state of North Carolina - we're thrilled to be among the selections and can't wait to see the other great films that will be shown.

If you're local to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro/Durham/Raleigh area (or even if you're not), mark your calendars now and plan to come out and see us on the big screen. The festival runs from 1-7 pm, and the full schedule will be posted on the Festival website sometime closer to the day. Until then, be sure to check out our trailer, if you haven't already.

El Caffinato Teaser Trailer!

Here it is, folks - the official teaser trailer for our hipster Western musical, "El Caffinato!"

Now that you've seen this, you're probably wondering when the whole thing comes out. Keep watching this space for news about screenings and festivals. And eventually, of course, the whole thing will be available online; not for a while yet though. For now, you'll just have to watch this trailer. Over and over. Show it to your friends and loved ones. Embed it on your blog or Facebook page. Help us spread the word! 

Start counting down! - The El Caff trailer is coming

You can begin the countdown, everyone, because as of Monday, October 17, the El Caffinato teaser-trailer will be online and ready for viewing!

Aiden picks up paper, just like they do it in the movie.

If we've been lapse in our posting of news here on the blog, it's only because we've been hard, hard, hard at work readying El Caffinato for the world. As reported previously, we built a sound booth in our apartment and have been bringing in our fabulous cast one by one to record the final vocal parts for the movie; that same sound booth was also host to Liz and Aiden doing Foley (sound effect) work - they systematically recreated every sound that you will hear throughout the film, one by one! That includes, but is not limited to: paper tearing, clothing shifting, feet stepping, coffee sipping, and, um, the sound a chess piece makes when it meets its demise (you'll see!). We even took the mic outside one night after it had rained to get that perfect cowboy-boots-on-wet-asphalt sound.

Liz, Rory, and Aiden head out at night for Foley work.

Once we had it all recorded, it was time to mix-mix-mix and color correct. Now we have a film that's been mixed more than stiff-whipped egg whites and colored more than a second grader's coloring book (albeit a little more carefully). Not really, of course - it just feels like a ton of work, and it encourages hyperbole. The end result, however, which we are still inching towards, is just marvelous.

Sarah Long records some lines of dialogue

So why just a teaser-trailer? Well, we have already begun the process of submitting El Caffinato to film festivals and will be continuing to do so for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, that means that it might be shown on some nice big screens. Unfortunately, it means that we can't let you see the whole film through the comfort of your chosen web browser just yet. Along with the trailer on Monday, however, we will have a nice gallery of production stills for you to look at, and if you are local to the Carrboro-Chapel Hill area, there will likely be some local screening parties (dates and locations still TBA).

Thanks for sticking with us - we know it's been a long wait, but we think you'll find it's worth it!

Picture Lock!

Well, it's been about 3 weeks since we first posted on our Facebook page that we had finished a rough cut, and about 5 weeks since the shoot - but we can now say with a certain degree of confidence: we have picture lock!

In other words, we've made all the cuts we want to make, we've put the pictures in the order we want them to be in, and generally, from start to finish, the film plays out the way we want it to play out. Of course, good news has to be tempered, so we have to rush to say that the film is still not ready to be shown just yet, but we are one major, MAJOR step closer! Just knowing that we can get from frame one to the end without any holes is a big relief for us (you never know, when you've finished production, whether that will be true or not).

So what's left, you ask? Two major steps, which we'll be tackling simultaneously. We have to record and mix our sound, which involves doing ADR and re-recording for all the vocal tracks and then doing Foley for the sound effects. Tonight we built a little sound recording booth in our apartment out of cardboard and some egg crate bed toppers that were on clearance sale. With our super cool USB mic and spit guard, it looks like a pretty pro little setup (and it sounds great, too!).

In addition, we have to do color correction, which is the rather pain-staking process of looking at each shot and balancing its levels and colors with the ones around it to disguise the fact that we shot completely out of sequence, and two shots that appear back to back might actually have been shot at 3 pm and 11 pm, respectively.

But never fear, folks - we have a deadline, and we're determined to meet it. We won't say it out loud here, lest we jinx it, but watch this space. There will be more soon!

That's a wrap!!

Yesterday was the major production day for El Caffinato, and a little less than twelve hours ago we got our final shot. After coming home from the shoot, too buzzed to go to sleep, we sat up and watched all of the footage from both days (we shot at the Carrboro Arts Center for a few hours on Saturday as well); all we can really say right now is: Wow! It looks absolutely stunning. Here is just a tiny preview of the sort of images we got yesterday, though a still doesn't begin to do the footage justice.

from left: Christian Straubhaar, Rory Bradley, Melanie Ungar, Michael Mulaiya, Sarah Long, Matthew Hauser, Julia Hood, Liz Levitt, Miles Bonsignore

So we have a lot of work ahead of us and also a lot of little things to share here in the coming weeks. For now, we really just want to take the time to say thank you to everyone who has made this film possible, not to mention better than we ever imagined:

As we reported last week, we were incredibly lucky to have Nic Beery of Beery Media on board as Director of Photography/Cinematographer. It was awesome to watch Nic work yesterday - he has such an amazing touch, constantly adjusting, re-framing, tilting, panning, always looking for the most expressive and interesting framing. Nathan Rosenquist worked with him as Gaffer and did a spectacular job of making our location look like a hip coffee shop at night, even though we started shooting at 3 in the afternoon on a bright North Carolina day. David Parent worked as both Camera Assistant and Assistant Director on this project, and without his reminders and guidance, I'm very sure that we would have missed several crucial shots or just not made it through the day. A huge thank you to all of them!

On the other side of the camera, we had the best (and best-looking) cast that anyone could ask for. Aiden Dale, Zach Davidson, and Emily Frachtling all put out amazing performances as El Caffinato's leads: Dusky Dan Digby, Milo Beckett, and Pepper, respectively. In most cases, they were able to give a jaw-dropping performance on the first or second take, which was crucial, since we were shooting 8 pages in 10 hours. Miles Bonsignore, Matthew Hauser, Julia Hood, Sarah Long, Michael Mulaiya, Christian Straubhaar, and Melanie Ungar filled out the hipster population of El Caffinato beautifully - we were amazed to see how each and every one of them really took up their characters and gave them a life and energy that just popped right off the screen. Watching the footage, it feels truly like an ensemble piece with really terrific performances by all.

Also in front of the camera was the artwork of Kate McCracken, a local Carrboro artist whom we met at Jessee's. She does amazing figurative graphite drawings, and we were so glad to have some of them on the walls while filming.

Finally, a huge thank you to Jenna Petrie from Jessee's Coffee and Bar, who stayed after hours to keep the place open for us during the shoot! Without her patience and forbearance, none of this would have been possible. Also from Jessee's, we want to say thank you to Olivia and Chyenna, who have been really supportive of this project throughout. Without a doubt, Jessee's is the coolest place to get coffee in Carrboro - once the film is done, we definitely hope to have a screening party there!

So as always, keep watching this space. We're going to be hard at work on Post-Production for El Caffinato now, and with a little luck and a lot of elbow grease, we should have a film to show in the near future!!